Writing & Art

7-9PM

Gallery Gachet
9 West Hastings
Vancouver, BC
V6B 1G4

Issue 3.37 Launch Party

7-9PM

Gallery Gachet
9 West Hastings
Vancouver, BC
V6B 1G4

February 20, 2019

SNACKS / READINGS / ART

We’re celebrating the launch of our Winter 2019 Issue! Join us from 7-9PM on Saturday, March 16 at Gallery Gachet for snacks and readings while surrounded by feature artist Riisa Gundesen’s solo exhibition Intrusive Thoughts. We’ll also have issues for sale and we might even give away a subscription or two. Plus—it’s your LAST CHANCE to check out Intrusive Thoughts as the show closes after our launch!

We respectfully acknowledge that this event will take place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded Indigenous territories of the ʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. We also recognize this acknowledgement itself as both necessary and insufficient—a starting point, not an end point.

This exhibition explores feminine representation, the abject, and mental health. In the context of Riisa’s work, the abject denies the viewer the anticipated pleasure of looking at the feminine body by showing mental and bodily functions that are often hidden or repressed. Riisa illustrates compulsive scratching, picking, and over-grooming in her self-portraits through the use of texture, paint, and ambiguous figures. At the same time, she uses rich and energetic paint colours to draw the audience into her paintings and evoke feelings of intrigue, alarm, and empathy. Together, Intrusive Thoughts investigates the possibilities of the abject as a metaphor for lived experience with anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and depression.